To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.
Where are you, Lord, in our affliction?
Why do you hide your face in times of trouble?
Where is your saving arm, your strong right hand
In the face of this microscopic enemy?
I am imprisoned in my own home,
Unable to escape from my children for even a moment.
I snap and yell, I stomp and fuss,
And then I know my guilt, for others
Are facing much worse now and in days to come.
Where are you, O Lord?
Why do you not rise up and stop this virus?
For the sake of your glory, for the sake of your name,
Make this vanish with a word, like the mist before the morning sun.
I am worried about my parents, my in-laws,
All those in my parents’ generation who raised me in their love.
I am anxious about friends who already struggle with their health.
I see people losing jobs and refugees losing even what small place they had,
I see the sick with no room at the hospitals and the lonely and depressed sinking lower.
This disease is coming, coming, coming, and none can stop it but you.
Why do you not come?
You of great love and great power, you alone have the means to deliver us.
Why have you removed your saving hand?
Where are you, Lord, in our darkness?
I see the answer when I gaze at the cross.
You are here.
Our tears are your tears. Our pain is your pain.
Our grief is your grief. Our suffering is your suffering.
You who have every right to the glory of heaven
Have chosen to be with us in all of our sorrow.
I see your presence in the face of my girls,
In the hands of my husband,
In the eyes of my neighbor.
I see your presence in the coming together,
In the surrounding each other,
In the laying down of what we once held dear.
Teach us, O Lord, what is most important.
Teach us to treasure what your heart treasures.
Help us to slow down and give up,
To give each other our time and full attention,
To be still and quiet with you.
Teach us to know that you are God.
We are your people, your very own sheep.
Help us to open our hands and let go
Of that which we have grasped too tightly.
Help us to rearrange our hearts and priorities until
They more closely align with yours.
Help us not to waste these days but
To use them to more fully love you,
To more fully love each other,
To more fully love those who don’t yet know you.
We trust your heart toward us.
With your strength, we will use this time wisely,
To number our days and gain wisdom.
We will give rather than hoard.
We will serve rather than weep.
We will search for you in the small bits of beauty
You have scattered all around us.
We will praise you and give thanks
In this as in the most perfect of times,
For you are our God and have promised to never forsake us.
You have promised that a day is coming when all of this pain will fade,
When all of this sorrow will disappear
Like the morning dew when the heat of the sun arrives.
We trust in your promise and will wait patiently for you.
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.
Sorrow is common to us all.
Sorrow is part of what it means to live, part of what it means to be human.
Frederick Buechner says that this universal experience is what pulls us together, is what makes us feel akin to each other.
Sorrow is what keeps coming back to me as I prepare for this season of Lent.
While we all experience sorrow, only those of us who claim the name of Jesus have experienced the sorrow that comes when we are brought face to face with the shadowless light of God that exposes all of the ugliness deep inside.
It is this kind of sorrow that leads to the cross of Christ.
It is this kind of sorrow that leads to the beauty of transformation.
It is this kind of sorrow that changes everything.
Paul says that this kind of sorrow produces hope within that does not fail.
Paul also says that there is a worldly sorrow and a godly sorrow.
The worldly kind of sorrow produces death.
The godly kind of sorrow produces repentance which leads to salvation.
It is this kind of sorrow that breaks us and opens us wide to the painful healing that saves us.
It is this kind of sorrow that I want to lean into this Lent.
Our God is standing with His arms wide open, offering this kind of sorrow.
“Yet even now,” declare the Lord, “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. ~ Joel
I attended an Ash Wednesday service at a nearby Lutheran church this week.
We stood and confessed all together that we had sinned, that we had done wrong against God and against each other, that we couldn’t even manage to do the good God had asked of us much less refrain from doing evil.
And then we walked up to the pastor, one by one, and were marked with ashes.
We were marked with ashes as we mourned the wrong we cannot seem to turn away from.
We were marked with ashes in the sign of the cross as we remembered that we are covered by the grace of God.
The pastor looked me straight in the eye and said, “You are marked by the cross of Christ. You are a child of God.”
This is what this kind of sorrow produces.
The gift of becoming children of God.
So lean into your sorrow in this season so that you can settle into the hope of joy for eternity.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.
My third baby girl turns five on Monday.
She was a New Year’s baby, the first of the year in our county. In my own opinion, it would be difficult to find a better way to bring joy and hope to a new year than with a perfect baby.
She passed her Papa on her way to us.
My dear friend, Martha Cook, said it well: And so your Papa stood at Heaven’s Gate. He saw as she passed by. He blew a kiss. “Samantha,” he said, “God is sending you to the best of families.” Then he turned and entered into the arms of the God he served. Well done. Well done.
It is the way of this world and it is the way of our God. He loves us, knowing that the joy of His love will be enveloped in sorrow. He loves us while He bears our grief and our sorrow.
If God Himself bears both joy and sorrow, how can we expect anything different?
Yet we do. We expect joy without sorrow, love without grief. When the grief and sorrow come, we shake our fists at this God and ask why?
And we should ask why, but a why of a different kind. Why, God? Why would You choose to love us when we continually turn our faces from You? Why would You choose to take our grief and sorrow upon Yourself? Why did You come to our rescue instead of leaving us to the fate we brought on ourselves?
We will not, in this life, have joy without sorrow. We can either try to live this life with God or without Him. With Him, the joys are brighter and the sorrows are lighter.
So breathe in and breathe out.
We receive what You give; We give thanks for what You give.
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.
There is darkness in all of us.
It is a part of being human to feel the weightiness of the absence of God.
And there is an absence of God in this world. The Bible we profess speaks of it.
The prophets and psalms all speak of Him who is not there when He is most needed. The author of Hebrews strips all of our pretense away when he speaks of Noah, of Abraham, of Gideon and David and the rest who “all died without having received what was promised.”
It is the anguish of glimpsing the briefest glow of the light of presence without being allowed to bask in the sun.
It is a terrible love, this love of God for us. It is a love that means His absence as often as it means His presence. It is a love that Jesus speaks of when He utters in His darkest moment the piercing cry of Where are you, God?
You who are in heaven for us, why are you not down here in hell with us?
It is a terrible love that speaks of carrying our own cross, that utters the truth that all ye labor and are heavy laden.
It is a terrible love that wounds, or allows the wounds, before the healing can come.
It is a terrible love that weeps at the death of a friend, of Lazarus. They are tears that speak of the absence of God. Of the part of God in the very body of Jesus who would not save the life of His own friend.
This is, after all, the Gospel. It is terrible before it is beautiful. It is darkness before it is light.
We all labor and are heavy laden. We work so very hard to pretend that it is not so, but even when we are appalled at the darkness, we cannot help but listen to Jesus because we see in Him not only the darkness of being without God but the glorious light of what it looks like to be with God.
It is out of the absence of God that He becomes most present. It is out of the whirlwind, out of the storm that God first speaks to Job, answering Him not with answers but with Himself.
It is out of darkness that we first begin to perceive the light.
Paul says that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are”, and he points to “the apparent emptiness of the world where God belongs and to how the emptiness starts to echo like an empty shell after a while until you can hear in it the still, small voice of the sea, hear strength in weakness, victory in defeat, presence in absence.” ~ Frederick Buechner
The cross itself is a symbol of defeat before it is a symbol of victory and it, too, speaks of the absence of God.
When the absence is all that we see, when we are tempted to see in it a well of doubt that could lead us into atheism or at least into becoming agnostic, there is yet something else to see as well.
It was out of the darkness and absence that God first spoke. “In the beginning…the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
Darkness is upon our faces as well, a void that sinks deep into our hearts. And perhaps it is necessary for the reality of this darkness to fold itself around us for us to be able to glimpse the reality of the word that God spoke into the darkness, “God said let there be light, and there was light.”
It is a terrible love that is offered to us, and perhaps we must face the truth of the terribleness before we are capable of accepting the love.
Art credits: Three Crosses sketch by Rembrandt; Supernova photo by NASA
To hear my blog post read aloud, just click the play button. If you’re reading this in an email, you may have to click here to hear the post on my site.
I am always surprised when ugliness shows up in my heart.
Did I just think that?!
How could that have just flashed through my mind?!
I am shocked and horrified when my frustration makes the thought of running away from my family seem momentarily desirable.
I shouldn’t be surprised. There is something inside of me capable of deserting those I love.
It is inside of you too.
There is something inside of me capable of murder, adultery, theft.
It is inside of you too.
When I am shocked at the kinds of thoughts that can fly through my head, it is a kind of pride. It is a pride that thinks I am better. Better than those who fill our jails.
I am not.
This kind of shock is not a sorrow which leads to change. This is only a sorrow that I was not as good as I and others thought. It is a shock and sorrow that I am as weak as other humans.
True sorrow involves no surprise. It is not surprised at the depths of darkness in my soul. True sorrow is impossible to find on my own. It can only come from God.
Only when God looks at me can I know my own weakness and brokenness.
In the end, it is God looking into the sinner’s face that matters. ~ Henry Drummond (British revivalist and preacher, 1851-1897)
Only when God looks at me as He looked at Peter at the crow of the rooster, can I turn around and be changed.
Only when we come to our Father in response to His waiting look can we be freed and forgiven. ~ Henry Drummond
So stop being surprised and be sorrowful instead. Stay where you are and let God teach you.
That there can be ugliness in this life is not questioned by anyone. No one would argue with the idea that we all go through times of darkness, times of weeping, times of where in the world, where in all of this hurting world are You, God?
If the question then is not will I suffer, then the question must be what will I choose when I suffer.
When I hurt, will I believe that God works for the best in everything or will I wonder whether God is working at all? When I ache, will I believe that God is most present when I am at the end of myself or will I wonder whether God is really in anything at all? When I don’t know how long I can hold on, will I believe in God when I cannot see Him through the dark or will I wonder if the darkness is all that there is?
What do we do when we are sinking, when we are drowning, when we are at the end of ourselves and are pleading for relief?
Paul pleaded with God to remove his thorn. He begged God three times for release. The first two times? Heaven was silent. The third time? God said no.
Jesus asked if there was any other way but the Cross. God’s answer? No.
Why do we think it should be different for us? Why do we think that we should be exempt?
If God is most present and works most powerfully when we are at the end of our own limits, then shouldn’t we want to lean into our suffering rather than try to escape it?
Paul chose to boast of his weakness, to be content with his hardship. He chose to immerse himself in his thorn in order to gain more of Christ.
We don’t have a choice about whether we will hurt.
Our choice is in how we will respond.
Will we spend our time begging for respite? Will we beg God to take it away and then curse Him when He does not?
Or will we receive our suffering as a gift? A gift with a purpose, even though we may never know the purpose. A gift with a promise, a promise of grace and God’s presence.
When God says no, when God says My grace is sufficient for you, instead of arguing with Him about it, instead of fighting Him with all of your strength, ask Him to help you get to the place where you can receive your adversity as a gift from a loving Father.
A gift that brings you more of His grace. A gift that brings you more of Him.
I have learned to kiss the waves that dash me against the Rock of Ages. ~ Charles Spurgeon
It is an inevitable part of life that monochromatic winter begins to melt into spaces of bright color. Snow gives way to tulips and crocuses. Perhaps it is our necessary reminder that death is followed by new life. Our reminder of Easter.
It was our first Easter without Kristina.
On Easter morning, my eldest ran into the living room where we had left the figure of Jesus on the cross the night before, eyes wide with hope of resurrection. “Daddy, look! Jesus left us flowers that God made!”
Hope and joy at the end of sorrow and pain. This is Easter.
On Easter morning, gathered with our Family, we sang, “The greatest day in history, Death is beaten, You have rescued me. Sing it out, Jesus is alive! Endless joy, perfect peace, Earthly pain finally will cease. Celebrate Jesus is alive! Oh, happy day, happy day…”
During a celebration after tragedy, hearts swell and overflow with emotions that at first glance seem to be at odds. We feel both joy and gratitude, sorrow and longing.
On Easter morning, the joy is easy. Jesus is alive!
Sorrow and longing, though, those are things that are more difficult. Yet they are real and, although hard, they are what should be.
We all suffer. We all love and therefore all suffer because in our broken world, love means suffering. Those who do not love much do not suffer much. I would not grieve so deeply had I not loved Kristina so much. God loves our world and therefore God Himself suffers.
Such sorrow was felt over our first Easter without Kristina.
We acknowledge that all of this, this pain and death and sadness, is not how it was supposed to be. None of this existed before we rebelled against God.
And so we sorrow.
Our longing is for that day of redemption and transformation. The day when earthly pain will cease and death will be banished for all time. We desperately wish to be gathered into Jesus’ arms and told that all is now well.
And so we long.
Sorrow and longing.
At second look, we are reassured that these are what we should feel. After all,
Our kind, heavenly Father has provided many wonderful inns for us along our journey, but He takes special care to see that we never mistake any of them for home. ~ C.S. Lewis
At the end of it all, however, our hearts must return again to gratitude.
On that Easter morning, as we worshiped together, we sang, “You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of the dust. You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of us.”
Just as we did in the middle of our ugly places, our hearts cry out “Why?” Yet this time, it is a vastly different sort of why.
This time we ask, why do You love me that much?
You went to the cross to allow us to become children of God. Wasn’t that more than enough? Why would You now also work so very hard to make beautiful things out of the dust that we are? Why would You pour so much into molding us into people who look like You?
Let us fall on our knees in joy and with gratitude for such lavish love.
On Easter morning and beyond, let our hearts swell with both sorrow and longing, joy and gratitude, knowing that Jesus is truly alive, knowing that He has defeated death.
They sit around the table laden with food, this family bound together by blood. There is light and laughter, talk of sports and of God, there is caring and kindness between generations. There are eyes shining bright, shining with love and with joy in the company around them.
And there is darkness.
There is one who is recently bereft of the comfort of spouse, struggling to find what is normal. There is one who sits heavy with the weight of marriage that is harder than expected. There is one who wonders if anything they do will ever seem good enough.
There is one who struggles with getting older, one who struggles with trouble at work and money that slips through the fingers, one who wonders if there is anything good coming when they can’t see what lies further down the road.
There is darkness in all of us. It is a part of being human to feel the weightiness of the absence of God. And there is an absence of God in this world. The Bible we profess speaks of it. The prophets and psalms all speak of Him who is not there when He is most needed. The author of Hebrews strips all of our pretense away when he speaks of Noah, of Abraham, of Gideon and David and the rest who “all died without having received what was promised.” It is the anguish of glimpsing the briefest glow of the light of presence without being allowed to bask in the sun.
It is a terrible love, this love of God for us. It is a love that means His absence as often as it means His presence. It is a love that Jesus speaks of when He utters in His darkest moment the piercing cry of Where are you, God?
You who are in heaven for us, why are you not down here in hell with us?
It is a terrible love that speaks of carrying our own cross, that utters the truth that all ye labor and are heavy laden.
It is a terrible love that wounds, or allows the wounds, before the healing can come.
It is a terrible love that weeps at the death of a friend, of Lazarus. They are tears that speak of the absence of God. Of the part of God in the very body of Jesus who would not save the life of His own friend.
This is, after all, the Gospel. It is terrible before it is beautiful. It is darkness before it is light.
We all labor and are heavy laden. We work so very hard to pretend that it is not so, but even when we are appalled at the darkness, we cannot help but listen to Jesus because we see in Him not only the darkness of being without God but the glorious light of what it looks like to be with God.
It is out of the absence of God that He becomes most present. It is out of the whirlwind, out of the storm that God first speaks to Job, answering Him not with answers but with Himself. It is out of darkness that we first begin to perceive the light.
Paul says that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are”, and he points to “the apparent emptiness of the world where God belongs and to how the emptiness starts to echo like an empty shell after a while until you can here in it the still, small voice of the sea, hear strength in weakness, victory in defeat, presence in absence.” ~ Frederick Buechner
The cross itself is a symbol of defeat before it is a symbol of victory and it, too, speaks of the absence of God.
When the absence is all that we see, when we are tempted to see in it a well of doubt that could lead us into atheism or at least into becoming agnostic, there is yet something else to see as well.
It was out of the darkness and absence that God first spoke. “In the beginning…the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” And darkness is upon our faces as well, a void that sinks deep into our hearts. And perhaps it is necessary for the reality of this darkness to fold itself around us for us to be able to glimpse the reality of the word that God spoke into the darkness, “God said let there be light, and there was light.”
It is a terrible love that is offered to us, and perhaps we must face the truth of the terribleness before we are capable of accepting the love.
Art credits: Three Crosses sketch by Rembrandt; Supernova photo by NASA
She is a New Year’s baby, the first of the year in our county. In my own opinion, it would be difficult to find a better way to bring joy and hope to a new year than with a perfect baby.
She passed her Papa on her way to us.
My dear friend, Martha Cook, said it well: And so your Papa stood at Heaven’s Gate. He saw as she passed by. He blew a kiss. “Samantha,” he said, “God is sending you to the best of families.” Then he turned and entered into the arms of the God he served. Well done. Well done.
It is the way of this world and it is the way of our God. He loves us, knowing that the joy of His love will be enveloped in sorrow. He loves us while He bears our grief and our sorrow.
If God Himself bears both joy and sorrow, how can we expect anything different?
Yet we do. We expect joy without sorrow, love without grief. When the grief and sorrow come, we shake our fists at this God and ask why?
And we should ask why, but a why of a different kind. Why, God? Why would You choose to love us when we continually turn our faces from You? Why would You choose to take our grief and sorrow upon Yourself? Why did You come to our rescue instead of leaving us to the fate we brought on ourselves?
We will not, in this life, have joy without sorrow. We can either try to live this life with God or without Him. With Him, the joys are brighter and the sorrows are lighter.
So breathe in and breathe out.
We receive what You give; We give thanks for what You give.
